The Next Generation of Financial Messaging for Corporates

Finastra has a long heritage of providing SWIFT connectivity and service bureau services to corporations and financial institutions through its predecessor company D+H, and together with the Misys Confirmation Matching Service (CMS), is the industry-leader in confirmation matching solutions for foreign exchange, money market, FX options, commodities, and derivatives transactions, providing these services to over 1,250 corporate and financial institution clients worldwide. With over 200 corporate clients using our SWIFT connectivity services, and four SWIFT-accredited service bureaus globally Finastra has a detailed understanding of the specific needs of corporate treasurers and finance managers, which are often distinct from those of financial institutions. In particular, corporate users have expressed a strong desire for a single, integrated connectivity platform to complement their existing ERP, payment and treasury management systems, building on Finastra’s existing expertise and solutions developed over many years. This client engagement process has given rise in Finastra’s innovative new solution, Total Messaging for Corporates.

Understanding the corporate challenge

A priority for corporations across all industries and regions is to achieve visibility over cash and improve efficiency and control over transactions. This is particularly difficult for businesses operating internationally that often have a large number of accounts, multiple banking relationships and disparate communication channels to support their domestic and cross-border payment and information requirements. These problems are exacerbated further by the growing threat of fraud and data security breaches, which has emphasised the importance of best-in-class controls, and the diversity of message and file formats adopted by the banking and vendor community.

Corporate treasurers are therefore seeking a cohesive way of communicating with their banking partners globally that embraces industry best practices in efficiency and security. SWIFT, the messaging platform used by banks to exchange transactions, through which corporations can also communicate with partner banks, is typically considered the gold standard for connectivity. However, many corporations lack the capacity and skills internally to implement and manage SWIFT, so Finastra has built up a comprehensive service offering which enables clients to outsource financial messaging, connectivity and integration. This includes support for a range of other channels and communication protocols in addition to SWIFT, allowing the corporate to outsource all its bank connectivity even when not all bank partners or banking services are accessible through SWIFT. In addition, Finastra provides high performance solutions for sanctions screening, conversion of formats between banks and internal systems for straight-through-processing of transactions and information, and efficient and timely handling of exceptions.

Creating a cohesive experience through a single platform

Building on this experience, expertise and solutions developed over many years, and extensive interaction with corporate treasurers and finance managers to understand their needs and challenges, Finastra has brought together its messaging, transformation and authentication solutions into a Total Messaging for Corporates platform (Box 1). 

The Total Messaging for Corporates offering extends the capabilities of Finastra’s core Total Messaging platform, in particular areas where corporates are not able to achieve a fully integrated and automated use of the SWIFT bureau with treasury and ERP systems in their corporate landscape

Organisations of all sizes can reap the benefits of a single global view of balance and transaction information across their banks, improved transaction automation and security, robust payment authentication and improved integration with internal systems (Box 2). Given that corporates choose to use different transmission methods to their banks, Total Messaging for Corporates is channel-agnostic, so the same functionality and user experience is available to clients irrespective of whether they use one or a combination of SWIFT (FIN and FileAct), bank FTP portals or host-to-host connectivity, or local payment channels such as EBICS and BACS amongst many others. Clients can take advantage of Total Messaging for Corporates as part of Finastra’s service bureau offering, or use it within their organisations to manage connectivity, STP and transaction control effectively.

Diverse use cases

Every organisation has its own distinct needs according to its bank relationships, technology infrastructure, geographic reach and level of centralisation, so Total Messaging for Corporates can be deployed in a wide variety of different ways. For example, treasury and finance departments will already have comprehensive treasury and/or payments systems functionality, but are looking for a payment transformation tool to translate file formats from internal systems to match to bank systems. In other cases, treasurers may need more comprehensive functionality for cash visibility and payments automation. Some may wish to fully outsource to Finastra while others may want to manage some or all aspects of bank connectivity and integration in-house.

An evolving solution

In addition to the wide range of capabilities that the platform provides today, Finastra will continue to develop Total Messaging for Corporates in line with evolving customer demand, to complement their payment and treasury management technology, integrate changes to market and regulatory conditions and ensure interoperability of the solution with other products and services in the Finastra portfolio. Furthermore, Finastra is able to leverage the services and solutions we offer to financial institutions to extend additional functionality to corporations, such as intraday as well as end-of-day account statements, and integration with compliance and sanctions screening tools. This is increasingly important not only for financial institutions, but also for non-bank financial institutions such as insurance companies and multinational corporations.

While many of the capabilities of Total Messaging for Corporates are already familiar to users of financial messaging applications, clients have strongly expressed the value of a single, SaaS-based platform that can be used to deliver a bank connectivity, automation and integration service, or leveraged in-house as appropriate. By bringing together Finastra’s existing capabilities that were provided through multiple systems into a single Total Messaging for Corporates platform, treasurers can leverage the functionality they require today whilst equipping themselves to manage changes in their own information and transaction processing requirements and future market developments.